C C P

C C P Alliance

Lets get back to this HAC thing. The first HAC proposal raised discussion around tons of topics (you can find it HERE if you don't believe me). Common ones included our overall design for tech levels, the way HACs intersect with tech 1, tech 3, and faction ships and of course specific input on ship-by-ship stats and performance. I want to try and cover as much of this as possible so get some tea or something.

Lets start with role. We've had several presentations and posts and dev blogs now which explain that tech 1 is general and tech 2 is specialized. While this is certainly our high-level goal, it will be compromised occasionally when the specifics of a certain project have other goals that pull in another direction. HACs are an example. The reality is that when HACs were first introduced they were just cruisers on steroids. The defensive benefits of added resists were the most distinct 'specialization', but they were nowhere near as specialized as something like Recons or Stealth Bombers.

With the rebalance effort here, we discussed entirely new roles or specializations that would be more in-line with the high level ideas we have laid out for all EVE ships, but ultimately decided that it wasn't worth completely throwing out the ships we had. Not only do they have a lot of history in the game, which leads to attachment, but they also have a lot of legitimate use already which we wanted to avoid disrupting if possible.

Now all that said, most of the feedback was in agreement that you would prefer to have their role more clear and pronounced. Basically, we didn't go far enough by adding the role bonus and it would be better if they stood out more from their competition as being specialized in some way. So, we focused on their resilience. HACs are tough but mobile cruisers that can take a lot of punishment. What we want to do is extend that tenacity to some of their other systems, namely electronics and capacitor.

All HACs will gain 7-8 sensor strength, putting their average Sensor Strength at 22 which is right around combat battleship range.

All HACs gain 15k to 25k lock range

All HACs have their cap recharge per second set to around 5.5 rather than the former 3.5 - 4.5 cap/sec

Along with these changes, we are going to go ahead with the originally proposed role bonus. I've seen and participated in tons of talk about this bonus and I keep seeing the same problem - the tracking formula is not intuitive and the confusion leads to this bonus looking less powerful than it actually is. I've made another set of graphs to help illustrate, but please keep in mind that this is just one example and results may vary.

On the left is the damage that three different ships (Null Blaster Talos, HML Drake and AHAC Zealot) do to a Sacrilege with its MWD on without the role bonus. On the right is after the role bonus. You can see that the Zealot, which tracks extremely well, isn't heavily affected, but the Talos and the Drake lose about 25% of their DPS. Now we can have a new discussion about how important that 25% is, but its important to understand that we are usually talking about an extremely significant amount of damage mitigation when MWD is active. And again, we know that not all HACs will be running MWDs, but we feel that those configurations are plenty powerful and prefer to support a larger variety of applications by adding the MWD bonus.

Alright, lets get to specifics. The big takeaway from feedback (both CSM and public thread) was that we have more room to make HACs more powerful without putting too much pressure on their competition, so watch for that as you read through all the changes. Note: the differences appearing in (parentheses) are as compared to the version of ship on TQ currently, not the first iteration.

Science and Trade Institute

Caldari State

Hmm, not so sure if I can agree with the cap recharge removal for the Sac, it tanked like a monster and I fear it will be far more frail now that it's gone. You can also make it a nice and round 6.0(edit3x 6.66 is very nice. Will see how that play out. Glad you're keeping the utility high tho. Will be interesting to see how a neut/nos will work on it.)

I can see some homogenization (similar bonuses etc) going on, maybe it's just me.

Respawn Disabled

Brute Force Solutions

They still lack the EHP or the DPS to compete with their T1 counterparts, and lock range was never a problem for the non-sniper HACs. I like the sensor strength bonus, but these ships still aren't worth the cost compared to their T1 counterparts!

They need more DPS, more EHP, and the Vaga needs some more powergrid (to XLASB a Vaga, with 5 180mms, an MWD, you still need an ACR)

Caldari Provisions

Caldari State

I'm really excited about the Eagle, Ishtar, and Vagabond. However, I feel that the kinetic damage bonus on the Cerebus is another relic of the past. Can't it just be a slightly reduced bonus to all missile damage?

The Scope

Gallente Federation

The other big problem with the Vaga is the Cynabal. That is not a problem we want to address by having an arms race between the two during this rebalance. The Cynabal needs a look and I'm sure when we get to pirate cruisers we can solve the problem.

I think you're doing great work overall. IMHO all the proposed changes are good so my only comment is: please don't ruin the Cynabal I trust you will manage to keep it a powerful ship, inline with its cost, that can be flow in a variety of ways -- armor, shield buffer, shield active, ac, arty, etc, and pretty please with a cherry on top don't nerf its speed. Thank you.

I'm really excited about the Eagle, Ishtar, and Vagabond. However, I feel that the kinetic damage bonus on the Cerebus is another relic of the past. Can't it just be a slightly reduced bonus to all missile damage?

Absurdity of Abstractions

These definitely sound much better than the previous iteration. While I do still have a few concerns, they mostly have to deal with the metagaming of New Eden, and thus can't really be counted on too heavily for balance purposes, as the meta is constanty changing and morphing with the times.